Puppy 5.01 and Mobile Broadband

Under development: PCMCIA, wireless, etc.
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TrailerTrash
Posts: 67
Joined: Tue 29 Jan 2008, 16:50

Puppy 5.01 and Mobile Broadband

#1 Post by TrailerTrash »

Finally, after waiting literally years, here is a Linux that puts me online with Verison Wireless without me having to open a terminal and slog my way through a swampland of uncertainties. All I have to do is to open the WVdial GUI, click on probe and enter "#777" and it works.

Thanks Puppy

My 3G connection is stable and dependable. No worries. Perfect. It was worth waiting for too. And, with frugal installation, chances are slim that anything will happen to mess it up.

Of course I have a question too. You must have known that???

Here it is. Now with this innovation I have chucked MS off my home computer but I still have XP on my laptop because I can't get 5.01 to boot up on it. It will boot almost all of the 4.xx but no 2.xx, 3,xx or 5.xx. It is an IBM ThinkPad T42 model.

The question is where in Puppy is the stuff that the computer sees when booting and how can I change it so it will boot.

Is there a book type Puppy resource that I can study and find a way to boot 5.xx? As soon as I can get the Puppy on my laptop the last MS system will be gone from my house.

I am perfectly willing to use a 4.xx Puppy but they don't make my 3G connection. Is the 3G in a .pet that I can download and use elsewhere?

When I try to boot off the DVD I get the "no operating sys" flag.

Mind you this is not a bios thing. It's something else.

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rcrsn51
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Location: Stratford, Ontario

#2 Post by rcrsn51 »

Are you saying that you can successfully boot a 4.x CD, but a 5.0.1 CD gives the "no operating system" message?

Since that message is coming from the BIOS, it has nothing to do with Puppy and suggests a problem with the disk.

Or are you getting the "pupxxx.sfs not found" message?

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TrailerTrash
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#3 Post by TrailerTrash »

rcrsn51 wrote:Are you saying that you can successfully boot a 4.x CD, but a 5.0.1 CD gives the "no operating system" message?

Since that message is coming from the BIOS, it has nothing to do with Puppy and suggests a problem with the disk.

Or are you getting the "pupxxx.sfs not found" message?


Truth is I can't remember exactly what the message was but it conveyed the idea that no operating system was found.

That was when I had XP alone on the machine. Now I have XP plus Ubuntu which means that Grub is being detected. Now when I attempt to boot off a DVD I can still get 4.31 for instance to load but with 5.01 the computer searches and then after a while decides upon showing the Grub menu.

Maybe I'll just wipe the HD and start over. You know in bios there are only a very limited number of things one can select. It's DVD booting "yes or no" and that's about it. So, when I see 4.31 booting but 5.01 not booting I am led to suspect some difference in the two.

I'm going to wipe my drive and begin fresh....

I'll report back later today...

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rcrsn51
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#4 Post by rcrsn51 »

Now when I attempt to boot off a DVD I can still get 4.31 for instance to load but with 5.01 the computer searches and then after a while decides upon showing the Grub menu.
Then there's something wrong with your 5.01 disk. Do you have another machine you can try it on?

Wiping your hard drive won't fix this.

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TrailerTrash
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Joined: Tue 29 Jan 2008, 16:50

#5 Post by TrailerTrash »

rcrsn51 wrote:
Now when I attempt to boot off a DVD I can still get 4.31 for instance to load but with 5.01 the computer searches and then after a while decides upon showing the Grub menu.
Then there's something wrong with your 5.01 disk. Do you have another machine you can try it on?

Wiping your hard drive won't fix this.



OK well I did wipe the HD anyway but it remains unformatted.

Here is what I just did.

I burned a fresh image of 5.01 and tried to boot it into my IBM ThinkPad.

The message returned was:

"error: unknown filesystem
grub rescue>_"


At this point there is a cursor so I suppose if I knew what to enter maybe I could fix it...

???? :?:

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rcrsn51
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Location: Stratford, Ontario

#6 Post by rcrsn51 »

rcrsn51 wrote:Then there's something wrong with your 5.01 disk. Do you have another machine you can try it on?
I did a test burn of lupu-501.iso onto a CD and it boots fine. Are you using CDs or DVDs?
rcrsn51 wrote:Wiping your hard drive won't fix this.
You now have a hard drive with GRUB stage1 on the MBR but no stage2 because you deleted everything. You need to boot off a working disc, install Puppy/Lupu and reinstall GRUB.

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TrailerTrash
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#7 Post by TrailerTrash »

rcrsn51 wrote:
rcrsn51 wrote:Then there's something wrong with your 5.01 disk. Do you have another machine you can try it on?
I did a test burn of lupu-501.iso onto a CD and it boots fine. Are you using CDs or DVDs?
rcrsn51 wrote:Wiping your hard drive won't fix this.
You now have a hard drive with GRUB stage1 on the MBR but no stage2 because you deleted everything. You need to boot off a working disc, install Puppy/Lupu and reinstall GRUB.


Ok I'll do that. The answer to your question is "DVD". Puppy 3.xx and 4.xx both boot OK from DVD's.

TT

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TrailerTrash
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#8 Post by TrailerTrash »

Thanks to you for the help.

Here is the latest about me trying to boot 5.01 on my ThinkPad T42. Funny that 3.xx, 4.1x and 4.2x booted OK when others did not, off DVD.

I had repeated failure using a DVD/CD so I put it on a pen drive and it booted right up. So much for that. Maybe it is a bios thing after all.

I am content now. I have Lupu on both my computers and M$ is history.

I have never had much good luck using grub so I use Puppy as "save to file". So, the sfs and save are together on hard or pen drive but I always download and keep my "home" file on a separate partition. This way the smaller save file size is no detriment and I can be spared the iffy-ness of having to remember stuff (which I am not good at).

Thanks for the help

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TrailerTrash
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#9 Post by TrailerTrash »

It's fixed.

I think the trouble was the bios after all because when I put Lucid on a pen drive it booted right away.

No Worries.

tt 8)

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